Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne

How does everything around us get made? People are deeply curious about how things come into being. Yet manufacturing, a key part of the design process, is often hidden from view. Christopher Payne’s photographs reveal the unique combination of human skill and mechanical precision that transforms raw materials into useful objects and systems.

Payne has spent more than 10 years photographing America’s factories, joining a lineage of photographers that includes Louis Hine, Alfred T. Palmer, and Gordon Parks, who also documented the American worker. Some of the factories rely on handcraft and have remained proudly unchanged over decades. In others, engineers and technicians work side by side with robots, pushing the limits of technology and collective intelligence—both human and artificial. Payne’s photographs celebrate the grace and craftsmanship of skilled makers and convey useful information about the complex machinery used in the making process.

Payne describes factories as places where people of varying ages and backgrounds come together to work toward a common goal. His images are windows into our industrial past and our technological future, from the New England textile mills that were among the country’s founding industries to the new plants for building microchips and quantum computers.

Through his visually arresting photographs, Payne documents a world of making and makers that continues to change at staggering speed. In celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, this exhibition brings together some of Payne’s most iconic images to consider the American factory as a key site of design ingenuity and innovation.